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> No need to bring in animals to explain this. There are a handful of human coronaviruses - I think 4 that are not SARS-related, but I’m on mobile so will have

> No need to bring in animals to explain this. There are a handful of human coronaviruses - I think 4 that are not SARS-related, but I’m on mobile so will have to dig up the study later. Read the paper, they're making a distinction there because the zoonotic viruses are different to the endemic human ones, but closer to SARS-CoV2. > Besides, once a virus jumps from an animal it either becomes a human virus (capable of spreading), or somehow is a one-off virus that can jump from animal->human but not subsequently to another human. That's the point, the zoonotic viruses aren't spreading in humans, but they may well elicit an immune response.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
> Read the paper, they're making a distinction there because the zoonotic viruses are different to the endemic human ones, but closer to SARS-CoV2. To your point, the paper says this: > Even though we cannot exclude that some SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells might be naïve or induced by completely unrelated pathogens5, this finding suggests that other presently unknown coronaviruses, possibly of animal origin, might induce cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T cells in the general population. I did miss that detail. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll need to think more on this. My gut feeling is that, if these are zoonotic viruses that are not human-transmissible, how could this phenomenon be so widespread? EDIT: Ah, it sounds like, they detected some that could only be explained by zoonotic CoVs, whereas the majority could be explained away by exposure to human coronaviruses? (I'm planning on circling back to read the paper more closely later but need to take a break for now)